Pâté de campagne

Every time I go to France this is something I love to pick up at the traiteur followed by a trip to the boulangere for a baguette to accompany it. I love the earthy flavours of this dish. It sounds a simple enough dish, but does require time and effort on the part of the cook.

Traditionally this is made with pork, either shoulder or belly, lardons and liver. Like most recipes I tweaked it a little as I had some pork cheeks and as pork liver wasn't easy to come by, substituted calves liver instead (calves liver isn't cheap, so you could go for chicken or duck livers). You can wrap this in caul fat (crepinette) which helps it hold its shape but for this recipe I used pancetta as the butcher didn't have any caul in stock.
This recipe is great for a drinks gathering or as a starter, it should make 8-10 slices, depending on how thick you like to cut it.

Place the pork cheek and liver in a bowl with the garlic, lardons, sage and bay leaves
Add 5 sprigs of thyme and 3 sprigs of rosemary and pour the wine and Madeira in the the bowl
Season with pepper, cover with cling film and leave to marinate overnight in the fridge
Next day remove the herbs and strain the liquid, keep the liquid to one side
Place the meat and garlic mix in a mincer and mince using the coarse blade
Finely chop the parsley, the rest of the thyme and rosemary and add to the minced meat
Add the egg and strained liquid and stir through
Season with salt
Line the terrine dish with tin foil and then also line with either the caul fat or strips of pancetta
Allow some of the caul or pancetta to fall over the sides, that way you can use them to cover the top of the meat mix
Pour in the meat mix and cover the top with the overlapping pancetta or caul
Cover with tin foil or terrine lid
Place the terrine in a deep baking tray and pour in hot water until it comes halfway up the terrine
Place in the oven at 160c fan, 170c normal for 90 minutes
Remove from the oven once cooked and allow to cool with the lid or foil covering on before placing in the fridge overnight
You can place some weights on the top such as cans of veg to weight it down to compress it a bit more
Serve at room temperature with some crusty bread and some pickled veg